Meta

Tag: Health

About a month ago my family took a road trip to southern Colorado primarily to explore the Great Sand Dunes National Park. As luck would have it, the weather didn’t entirely cooperate, and we awoke to freshly fallen snow on our first morning outside the dunes. Recalling that a few friends had mentioned a nearby alligator and reptile rescue (yep, in Colorado – there are geothermal springs), we decided to head there instead of to the dunes that day.

While at the rescue, my 9-year-old son had a chance to hold a young alligator. After getting a few pictures snapped (ha, no pun intended), the alligator handler filled out a certificate of bravery for Julian and had the alligator bite the paper to “make it official.” He then asked my son to hold out his arm for a real alligator bite to show his friends that he really did hold one. Julian thought momentarily, then extended his arm. The handler started laughing a little bit and waved his arm away saying, “When you get older, people might ask you to do dumb things just for their entertainment. They’re called your friends. But you don’t have to do it. You can say no.”

That made me think about how as my kids enter their teenage years (it’s coming up so fast), they will likely encounter other kids who suggest they do X, Y, or Z — and marijuana may very well be one of those things.

In 2014 marijuana became legal for adults 21+ in Colorado. As a result of this, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) was tasked with educating the public about the health effects associated with retail marijuana use. Good to Know Colorado is the nation’s first public education campaign regarding the legal, safe and responsible use of retail marijuana. The campaign also helps parents and other adults learn the facts so they can have a positive, effective conversation with youth about not using retail marijuana before age 21.

Did you know that a child’s brain is still developing until age 25? For the best chance to reach their full potential, young people should not use retail marijuana. Using marijuana before age 21 can have negative health effects such as: decreased athletic performance, difficulty learning and memory issues, impaired judgment, and it’s harder to stop using marijuana if you start at a young age. For more information about the health effects of marijuana on youth, visit the Good to Know website.

According to the 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, first-time use of most substances, such as drugs and alcohol, among youth peaks during the summer months of June and July. That’s why it’s important for parents to start talking with their kids NOW about marijuana to ensure their children understand the reasons why and how to say no to retail marijuana.

The Good to Know website is an excellent resource when it comes to learning how to talk to your kids and encourage them to say no, while staying positive and maintaining a good relationship with your kids. For most parents, talking to their kids about drug and alcohol use doesn’t come naturally. And although it may be easy to tell kids to “just say no,” it’s not always that easy for kids to actually do it.

Good to Know offers a lot of great tips for parents to talk to their kids and advice on how to help kids find a way to say no that works for them, including:

Role-playing with kids is a great way to practice saying “no.”

Many kids don’t realize saying “no” can be as simple as saying, “If I get caught, I won’t be able to do sports, theater, dance, etc.”

You can also encourage your kids to use you as an excuse to avoid marijuana use. For example, “My parents would ground me for the summer.” This is especially effective for pre-teens.

Make sure you have the conversation more than once.

See below for more tips on how to talk to your kids about underage marijuana use.

Parenting comes with its challenges at all ages of development, which is why as we enter those tween/teen years, I’m thankful for resources such as this one to help me tackle an otherwise possibly difficult subject.

For more information about talking to your kids about underage marijuana use, please visit the Good to Know website at GoodtoKnowColorado.com/Talk.

This post is sponsored by Single Edition Media on behalf of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Opinions are my own.

Being present. Living in the now. It’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.

I will share more about this in the posts ahead, but for now all I feel comfortable saying is my anxiety has returned periodically in one form or another. As I look for new ways to address it, I have begun exploring meditation as a viable option.

My husband Jody joined the Headspace community eight months ago in an effort to work with anxious feelings of his own. If you aren’t familiar with HeadSpace, it is “a gym membership for your mind” or simply a course of guided meditation, delivered via an app or online.

When I found myself troubled with anxious thoughts or life issues in general, Jody would periodically say to me, “I think meditation could help you.” Being the stubborn Taurus that I am, I mostly rebuffed his well-intentioned suggestions, but could also see the positive effect Headspace was having on him. I decided to reserve the right to remain intrigued, but also aloof.

I continued to think about it. I read studies about meditation and anxiety like, “Research from 163 DIFFERENT STUDIES suggested that mindfulness-meditation practice had an overall POSITIVE EFFECT on improving anxiety and stress.” And, “Research in people with clinical levels of anxiety has found that 90% experienced SIGNIFICANT REDUCTIONS in anxiety.” From Harvard, a recent study by Dr. Elizabeth Hoge, a psychiatrist at the Center for Anxiety and Traumatic Stress Disorders at Massachusetts General Hospital and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, found that “a mindfulness-based stress reduction program helped quell anxiety symptoms in people with generalized anxiety disorder, a condition marked by hard-to-control worries, poor sleep, and irritability.” Research from John Hopkins suggested the same results.

Eventually I decided it certainly couldn’t hurt, and I signed up for the Headspace free 10-day introductory session. I jumped in with both feet. The first day I did two meditations back to back, hoping that would help speed up my progress! (If I’m going to do something, I’m going to go all out. Go big or go home and all that.) I was tempted to do all 10 in a day if it would have made a difference, but after talking to Jody I decided that, much to my chagrin, slow and steady really is the trick with meditation. So I backed off to once a day.

I’ve been meditating using Headspace for more than 40 days now (mostly consecutively, but I have taken a some days off here and there). I’m currently 10 days into a 30-day program specifically for anxiety. I’d say I’m definitely still in the beginning stages — learning to quiet this mind of mine is not an easy task — but I am learning tools to deal with the mind chatter. I see the light at the end of the tunnel and I think this is/will be good for me.

For those of you who are interested, I’ll continue to keep you posted about how it’s going.

TAKE THE CDG MEDITATION CHALLENGE:

If you are interested in trying out meditation (for any reason at all – doesn’t have to be to deal with anxiety or depression), I encourage you to try Headspace‘s free 10-day introduction. (By the way, I’m not affiliated with Headspace at all.) It will give you a taste of what the program is like. And if you do try it, I’d love to hear what you think! You can leave me a comment below to let me know you’re in or feel free to email me. Either way, I’d love to hear about your progress. I’ll post again in a few weeks so that anyone who’s taking the challenge can share how it’s going for them! You are worth taking 10-20 minutes per day to do something positive for yourself!
Or maybe you have another meditation app or practice that you follow. I’d love to know that too, so please share with me. I’m always looking for new ways to challenge and better myself.

A school garden can be a wonderful outdoor classroom. Children can learn a variety of subjects while working with others to grow their own food. But in some school districts the children have the gardens to grow the food, but are forbidden from eating it in their lunchrooms.

When I first read that the Chicago Public Schools are not able to use the produce grown in their more than 40 school gardens in the lunchroom, I was shocked. Why grow it if you can’t consume it? The truth is that due to rules set by the district and its meal provider the food must be either given away, sent home with students, or sold.

“In order to use food in the school food program, it would need to meet specific/certified growing practices,” CPS spokeswoman Monique Bond said.

These requirements would include eliminating all “pesticides and insecticide” applications and using only “commercially prepared organic compost and fertilizers,” said Bob Bloomer, regional vice president of Chartwells-Thompson.

Commercial vendors, though, don’t have to abide by these rules. They can sell the district produce treated with several pesticides and grown in nonorganic fertilizer.

But produce grown by the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences on its 25-acre farm wouldn’t make the grade because, for example, it treats its corn with a single pesticide.

The school district touts using some local produce in its lunch program, but the produce that is most local of all — grown right outside their doors — is off limits. Children are being denied the most local and fresh produce of all. How does that make any sense?

According to the CDC, more than one-third of U.S. adults (over 72 million people) and 17% of U.S. children are obese. For Chicago children ages 6-11, the obesity rate is 28%. So in an area where more and more children are overweight or obese and, as evidenced in Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, some American first graders can’t identify vegetables, the system is denying them healthy, local food.

Unfortunately, this is happening other school districts as well. Sybil who blogs at Musings of a Milk Maker told me on Facebook that this is also the case at the public school she is trying to get her daughter into.

Andrea Ward isn’t surprised by any of this. She had this to say on Facebook, “Lunch food is a big time business with big time rules and greed. Education is never about the kids (unless you are the one in the trenches–then that’s all you care about). Otherwise, it’s about politics. And politics is about money.”

However, other school districts across the country, such as Auburn School District in Washington state, have been able to adopt a garden to cafeteria plan. The school district’s 1 1/2 acre organic garden and orchard produces “fruits and vegetables for student lunches and snacks in 10 elementary schools. In addition to garden produce, the Auburn School District purchases from local farmers for all 22 schools.” This single garden produces food for all elementary schools during the growing and harvesting seasons.

Joanne White who blogs at Media Mum told me about her son’s elementary school in the Boulder Valley School District, Colo., where the school garden provides produce for its own salad bar. Joanne said, “The kids are fully involved from garden to table. No way Jamie Oliver would find any of them not knowing what a tomato is!”

In other school districts, the students eat what they grow, but not necessarily in the lunchroom, however not for the same reasons that the Chicago Public School District gave.

Karen from Eternal Maternal said her son participated in a school garden program at his elementary school located in Vancouver School District in Washington State. The children ate what they grew, but due to a variety of reasons including not enough of any one ingredient, lack of preparation time, etc., the produce was not used in the school cafeteria. Karen said, “I think it’s very important that kids learn where their food comes from and what it takes to get it to the point that it can be eaten. Providing food for oneself is a basic need. Typically, we don’t have to do it for ourselves until we’re in college and what do we do then? Go to the grocery store and buy a case of Ramen. When children learn to grow food that can sustain themselves, even if only partially, it gives them a sense of accomplishment, raises their awareness of the environment and, whether they realize it or not, raises their level of security because it’s a way they know of to care for themselves.”

At Stylin Momma Katy’s daughter’s charter elementary school in Maryland, all of the children participate in the school garden in one way or another. Her daughter is in kindergarten where they are in charge of pollination. The garden food is not used in the school cafeteria food (which is brought in) and most students bring lunches from home. However, Katy said, “they will sometimes have a sampling station in the lunchroom where the kids can try the foods picked from the garden, or they will use it in cooking class. They also have a school produce stand as a fundraiser.”

After hearing about the practices of different school districts, I have to say I find the reasoning behind Chicago Public School District’s ban on garden food in the lunchroom appalling. I have to agree with Andrea above who said, “it’s about politics. And politics is about money.” If the district had these kids’ best interests at heart, they would find a way to allow the locally grown garden food into the cafeterias.

Despite all of this, I am pleased to hear that many districts — especially inner-city districts like Chicago — have implemented school gardens. Perhaps even if the children are not allowed to eat the food in the lunchroom, they still are learning the valuable life lesson of how to grow it and perhaps are able to take some of it home to their families to enjoy.

Do your children have a school garden? Does the school use the produce in their lunchroom? How do you feel about Chicago’s policy?

Before you head to the store this weekend to buy your eggs and Easter egg dyeing kits, take a look at this fun and eco-friendly way to dye your eggs naturally with foods and spices like cabbage, blueberries, spinach, tumeric, chili powder and more! It’s a lot of fun for both the kiddos and adults (trust me). 😉 My kids and I can’t wait to do this again soon!

…………….

So you want to dye your Easter eggs naturally – without harmful chemicals and artificial colors? While it takes longer than the commercial egg dye kits you buy at the store, dyeing your eggs with natural foods is better for you and your child(ren)’s health, produces much more interesting colors, is better for the environment, and is, quite arguably, more fun!

Why dye with natural colors instead of artificial?
According to Organic.org, “Many food colorings contain color additives such as Red No. 3 and Yellow No. 5, which, according to a 1983 study by the FDA, were found to cause tumors (Red No. 3) and hives (Yellow No. 5).” I wrote about the drawbacks of artificial colors a while back if you’d like to read more on the topic.

It is more time-consuming than using a store-bought conventional egg dye kit (and I highly recommend preparing the egg dye baths a few hours before you plan to dye the eggs with the kiddos), but it is healthier for your kids and the environment. “Dyeing eggs the natural way gives you the opportunity to spend more time with your family, teaching kids to use alternative project methods that are healthier for them and the environment.” I think it will be a lot of fun and a great family project.

You Will Need The Following to Get Started:

Hard boiled eggs (preferably white eggs since they take on the dyes better than brown eggs)

Ingredients to make your dyes, which I will discuss in more detail below. As a guideline, use up to 4 cups for vegetable solids and 3–4 tablespoons for spices per quart. Mash up fruits.

White vinegar (2 Tablespoons for every quart of water)

Several pots and bowls

Optional: stickers, rubber bands, and crayons for decorating the eggs and making interesting patterns

Egg cartons for drying the dyed eggs

Creating Your Colors:

Natural egg dyes can be made from a variety of ingredients. Here’s a list of what I’ve used in the past along with comments on the colors that resulted.

RED

3 cans of beets in cranberry juice (instead of water) – produced a dark reddish hue

PINK

Frozen cherries – made a very light pink

RED-ORANGE

3 tablespoons of chili powder produced a nice reddish-orange color

YELLOW

3 Tablespoons of tumeric produced a great yellow

GREEN

A mix of canned blueberries and their juice and a few tablespoons of tumeric produced a gorgeous earthy green color

BLUE

3/4 of a head of red cabbage (chopped) made a beautiful blue

GREY BLUE

2 cans of blueberries and their juice made a grey-blueish color

GREY

Frozen cherries mixed with blueberries yielded a grey color (not the purple I was going for).

Egg Dyeing Instructions:
In the past I found a couple great web site with tips on “Natural Easter Egg Dyes” and Natural Dye from Organic.org. The natural dyes come from spices like paprika, tumeric and cumin; vegetables like spinach and red cabbage; fruit juices and even coffee. All of your dye ingredients can (and should) be composted after you are done.

On Organic.org, there is a boil method (which produces darker results) and a cold-dip method, which is suggested for children or if you plan to eat the eggs, which is the method we used last year.

Method 1—Hot
Place eggs in a single layer in a large, nonaluminum pan. Add the dyeing ingredient of your choice—it’s best not to mix until you are comfortable with experimenting. Cover the eggs and other dyeing “agent(s)” with one inch of water. Add 2 tablespoons of white vinegar per quart to help the color adhere to the egg, and bring to a boil. Next, simmer for 20–30 minutes or until the desired shade is achieved. If you cook the eggs longer than 15 minutes, they will become rather tough.

Method 2—Cold
The cold method is the same as the hot method with the following exception. Once ingredients have simmered 20–30 minutes (depending on desired shade), lift or strain the ingredients out of the water and allow the water to cool to room temperature though you may wish to try keeping the ingredients in the colored water to give the egg more texture as the dye will become concentrated in areas where the vegetable touches the egg. Submerge the eggs until the desired color is achieved. You may keep the eggs in the solution overnight as long as it is refrigerated.

The longer the egg stays in the dye, hot or cold, the deeper the hue will be. Using vinegar will also help the color deepen.

Definitely feel free to experiment and try out other foods and spices. For me, that was a big part of what made it so much fun, trying out different things to see what colors would come from them. For example, the dye from the spinach, tumeric, blueberry mix looked orange or brown, but the eggs came out green! And the red cabbage dye was purpley-pink, but the eggs came out blue. It’s a fun science experiment that the whole family can get involved in. Happy egg coloring!

Epidurals have become the “drug of choice” in maternity wards across the United States. As of 1997, “nearly two-thirds of all women who give birth in hospitals with high-volume obstetric units had an epidural during labor. In many hospitals, epidural analgesia is routine and is provided to more than 90 percent of all women who are in labor in that hospital.” Yet epidurals are not without potential risks for both mother and baby, which is part of the reason the findings from a new study on laboring women are so promising.

A new study reports laboring women given control over their epidural anesthesia resulted in a 30 percent reduction of the amount of anesthesia used and were “basically as comfortable” as women on a continuous dose. Researchers also report a trend toward fewer deliveries that required instrument assistance, such as forceps, in the patient-controlled group.

Dr. Peter Benstein, a professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology and women’s health at Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, said:

“My personal belief is that epidurals tend to slow labor down. So, if you can get away with less medication with patient-controlled analgesia, I think it’s a wonderful thing.”

“And, it’s not a surprise to me that women used less anesthesia. If you can titrate your own medication, you’re probably not going to give yourself a lot. An anesthesiologist will tend to give you a little bit more because they want to make sure there’s no pain.”

The author of the study is Dr. Michael Haydon, a perinatologist at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center in California.

Generally, epidural anesthesia is given on a continuous basis, according to Haydon. But patient-controlled devices that can control delivery of the anesthesia are widely available, he added. Patients are given a button to push when they feel they need more medication. The devices are programmed to only provide a specific amount of medication for specific time periods to ensure that people don’t give themselves too much.

The study randomly selected first-time mothers for one of three groups: “the standard dose given as a continuous infusion; a continuous infusion with an additional patient-controlled option; and patient-controlled anesthesia only.” The first group used an average of 74.9 mg of anesthesia during labor. The second group used an average of 95.9 mg, while the patient-controlled group used the least anesthesia of all, an average of 52.8 mg, according to the study.

Women in the patient-controlled group did report slightly higher pain scores when they got to the pushing part of the delivery, but also reported being satisfied with their pain relief overall.

This is good news because epidurals, despite having made labor more bearable for scores of women, have their pitfalls: they can lead to prolonged labor and an increase in vacuum and forceps deliveries. They can also result in more C-sections, which is far from ideal.

Less meds with the same level of relief? What’s not to like here? A lower dose of medication with adequate pain management would benefit both moms and babies. I find this study so exciting because it opens up new possibilities for women as active participants, not just passive patients, in hospital births. It’s ideas like these that may help us progress toward a hospital birth model that takes into account the needs of both babies and the mothers who give birth to them.

Laura Nelson at Think Baby writes about the study’s findings and how they might impact maternity care in the United Kingdom.

Patient-controlled epidural analgesia is currently only available in one-fifth of hospitals in the UK due to the expensive costs of the equipment needed. Experts are now looking into whether the positive effects outweigh the costs.??“The technique reduces the need for anaesthetic which in turn reduces the need for forceps delivery – and it gives women a feeling of control. The question is whether the small clinical advantages are enough to justify the cost of new equipment and staff training,” Dr Elizabeth McGrady, a honorary clinical lecturer in anaesthetics at Glasgow University said to the BBC.

Personally I’m all for empowering women to be, as Rebecca said, “active participants” in hospital births. Although I did not have an epidural with either my daughter’s hospital birth or my son’s home birth, there was a point during my induced labor with my daughter that an option like this would have appealed to me (had I not had complications including low platelets that prevented me from getting an epidural anyway). I hope this study leads to hospitals adopting patient-controlled epidurals as standard practice for women who choose to have epidurals.

Related links:

Over at Women’s Health and Pregnancy, there’s an informative post with diagrams and pictures about how an epidural is given, as well as the pros and the cons.

At Anticipation and Beyond, there’s another informative post about the dangers of epidurals. The author writes, “This blog isn’t to insult those who have made this choice, but to increase your knowledge, so you can make informed choices for the future.”

I recently read about a new Swiss study claiming that the ingredient titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles — widely used as a white pigment in sunscreen, toothpaste and cosmetics — provokes similar inflammatory effects on the lungs as asbestos. Yes, that asbestos. The stuff that can cause serious illnesses, “including malignant lung cancer, mesothelioma (a formerly rare cancer strongly associated with exposure to amphibole asbestos), and asbestosis (a type of pneumoconiosis).”

According to Jürg Tschopp, the lead researcher and professor of biochemistry at Lausanne University, “With titanium dioxide you accumulate, like asbestos, particles in the lung. You get chronic inflammation and this can last ten or 15 years and the next step is cancer.” Tschopp is concerned that nanoparticles could be the “asbestos of the future.” However, he also admitted in his findings that he would not immediately stop using sunscreen and toothpaste, but believes more caution and regulation are needed.

This begs the question: do you take the risk of avoiding sunscreen and exposing your skin to cancer-causing ultraviolet rays or do you use the sunscreen and risk the exposure to chemicals that may give you cancer anyway?

Huma Khamis of the consumer association of western Switzerland calls the sunscreen dilemma “a big problem,” but states “the immediate risks of not using cream [sunscreen] and sunbathing are greater than those of exposure to products containing titanium dioxide nanoparticles.”

Yet this isn’t the first time an ingredient in sunscreen has been called into question. I wrote about the chemical oxybenzone nearly three years ago. Oxybenzone — one of the commonly used ingredients in most sunscreens — has been linked to allergies, hormone disruption, and cell damage. It is also a “penetration enhancer, a chemical that helps other chemicals penetrate the skin.”

The primary sunscreen I’ve been using on my kids for the past several years — California Baby — does not contain oxybenzone and even tested quite well on the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep Cosmetics Safety Database. However when I rechecked the ingredients I noticed titanium dioxide was listed; although it did not specify whether the TiO2 was the suspect nanoparticles or not. At first I freaked out thinking I’ve been putting something potentially cancer-causing on my kids, but after asking a few Twitter friends (@YourOrganicLife and @ErinEly) their opinion, I decided to contact the company directly. I received an automated response indicating that “California Baby utilizes coated micronized titanium dioxide (TiO2 for short) as the active ingredient for our sunscreens.” I believe that means it is not nanoparticles, but I’ve asked for clarification from California Baby just to be sure (and will update here when I hear back from them).

I do my best to make informed choices regarding my kids’ health and safety. However, I’m not a chemist or a physicist and I can’t test every chemical out there. I have to rely upon others (the government?) to test for X, Y, and Z’s chemical safety, but it seems all too often that chemicals are assumed to be safe until proven otherwise. I don’t like to think of my kids (or anyone’s children for that matter) being used as guinea pigs and I don’t think it’s too much to ask that products and chemicals are tested before they are available for mass consumption. Do you?

Where does this leave me? I’ll stick to trying to limit our exposure to the sun during peak hours for starters. I already tend to do that, but this is a good reminder to continue. I may avoid sunscreen containing titanium dioxide all together and only purchase sunscreen in which zinc oxide is the active ingredient. (Badger makes a good one that I’ve used on my kids in the past.) Of course, we’ll continue to wear our hats and sunglasses — the kids’ eye doctor just reminded me about how important that is — as much as possible outdoors. Another thing I plan to do is buy some sun-protective swimwear for when summer rolls around again. The less exposed skin, the better.

Lastly, I will hope that testing will continue on the various chemicals in sunscreen, cosmetics and everything else we rely on both for ourselves and our children on a regular basis. I will sign petitions. I will blog. I will raise awareness.

Last month, The New York Times reported that despite 20 years of “public health initiatives, stricter government dietary guidelines, record growth of farmers’ markets and the ease of products like salad in a bag, Americans still aren’t eating enough vegetables.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a comprehensive nationwide behavioral study of fruit and vegetable consumption. Only 26 percent of the nation’s adults eat vegetables three or more times a day, it concluded. (And no, that does not include French fries.)

These results fell far short of health objectives set by the federal government a decade ago. The amount of vegetables Americans eat is less than half of what public health officials had hoped. Worse, it has barely budged since 2000.

The government recommends four and a half cups of fruits and vegetables (which equals nine servings) for people who eat 2,000 calories a day.

People know that vegetables are good for them and can improve health, but they are also seen as a lot of work and have a much quicker “expiration date” than processed foods. Even if you buy veggies with the best of intentions, if you don’t consume them fast enough, they are doomed to rot in your refrigerator. I think this is something we’ve all been guilty of at one time or another. A survey of 1,000 Americans conducted by White Wave Foods indicates that almost half of us leave our fruit in the refrigerator until it rots. I can only assume that even more vegetables suffer a similar fate.

Orange vegetables, like pumpkin, squash, carrots, and sweet potatoes contain nutrients and phytonutrients found in no other group of vegetables. That’s why experts recommend we eat at least 2 cups a week of orange vegetables. How many do you eat? If you’re not eating enough, now is the perfect time of year to start! All types of winter squash — acorn, butternut, hubbard, etc. are in season and cheap. Pumpkins and canned pumpkins are stocking the shelves. Carrots and sweet potatoes are found commonly throughout the year.

I’m not sure there’s a solution for getting adult Americans to consume more vegetables. They know they are healthy, but they still don’t eat them. Even with convenient options like prepackaged servings of broccoli and bagged salads available, they aren’t biting (pun intended). Until Americans make eating vegetables a priority, it’s not going to happen. After all, you can’t force feed them. Maybe we could hide vegetables in french fries? Hmm. Probably not. Although that is a technique some people use to get children to eat their veggies (remember Jessica Seinfeld’s book Deceptively Delicious?), though not everyone agrees with it.

Organic Authority points out the important of fruits and vegetables for children. “A diet high in fruits and vegetables is important for optimal child growth, maintaining a healthy weight, and prevention of chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and some cancers—all of which currently contribute to healthcare costs in the United States,” says William H. Dietz, MD, PhD, director of the CDC’s Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity.

Lisa Johnson mentions that some high schools have added baby carrot vending machines next to the typical junk food machines and wonders if the packaging (designed to look similar to a potato chip bag) will entice kids to buy them. Lisa says, “I have to say I think it’s a good idea. It might seem a little condescending to some but we are visual creatures and we react positively to colorful items that grab our attention while glossing over the ho-hum stuff. Shouldn’t we just capitalize on human nature to achieve a greater good?”

The Huffington Post reports “The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently announced what it called a major new initiative, giving $2 million to food behavior scientists to find ways to use psychology to improve kids’ use of the federal school lunch program and fight childhood obesity.” Some schools are employing psychology tricks in hopes of getting teens to make healthier lunch choices in the cafeteria. Cornell researches have dubbed these little tricks a success: “Keep ice cream in freezers without glass display tops so the treats are out of sight. Move salad bars next to the checkout registers, where students linger to pay, giving them more time to ponder a salad. And start a quick line for make-your-own subs and wraps, as Corning East High School in upstate New York did.”

Senior author of the study Julie A. Mennella, PhD said, “The best predictor of how much fruits and vegetables children eat is whether they like the tastes of these foods. If we can get babies to learn to like these tastes, we can get them off to an early start of healthy eating. … It’s a beautiful system. Flavors from the mother’s diet are transmitted through amniotic fluid and mother’s milk. So, a baby learns to like a food’s taste when the mother eats that food on a regular basis.”

However, regardless of whether your baby is breast-fed or formula fed, the article points out the importance of offering your baby “plenty of opportunities to taste fruits and vegetables as s/he makes the transition to solid foods by giving repeated feeding exposures to these healthy foods.”

What’s the answer to get Americans to eat their veggies? I vote for focusing on the children. Perhaps if Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution continues, not only will children start eating healthier, but their new habits may rub off on their parents too.

The question becomes: What is the best way to keep your child safe? How can a parent know that something they (or a friend or relative) buy for their little one isn’t going to cause them harm? Even if you make your own toys, buy them handmade by an artisan or buy supplies for your children to make their own simple toys, how can you know that the materials are all safe?

The fact is there is not enough being done in the United States to protect anyone, but especially children, from harmful chemicals.

They are chemicals found in a wide array of common household products — a list that is as long as it is familiar — shampoos and conditioners, cosmetics, plastics, shower curtains, mattresses, electronics like computers and cell phones, among others.

“For 80 percent of the common chemicals in everyday use in this country we know almost nothing about whether or not they can damage the brains of children, the immune system, the reproductive system, and the other developing organs,” said Dr. Phil Landrigan, a pediatrician and director of the Children’s Environmental Health Center at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. “It’s really a terrible mess we’ve gotten ourselves into.”

Environmental attorney and mother Patti Goldman believes, “When it comes to protecting our kids from toxic chemicals, parents need a system that meets us halfway. We need to shift the burden from families to the companies who are manufacturing and distributing the chemicals used in these products.”

The potentially good news is that new legislation called the Safe Chemicals Act of 2010 was recently introduced by Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) on April 15. This new act amends the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act and would “require manufacturers to prove the safety of chemicals before they are marketed. Of particular concern are carcinogens, to which the public remains dangerously exposed and uninformed.”

“America’s system for regulating industrial chemicals is broken,” said Senator Lautenberg. “Parents are afraid because hundreds of untested chemicals are found in their children’s bodies. EPA does not have the tools to act on dangerous chemicals and the chemical industry has asked for stronger laws so that their customers are assured their products are safe. My ‘Safe Chemicals Act’ will breathe new life into a long-dead statute by empowering EPA to get tough on toxic chemicals. Chemical safety reform is not a Democratic or Republican issue, it is a common-sense issue and I look forward to building bipartisan support for this measure.”

In the meantime, what is a parent to do?

You can start by checking out the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission Toy Hazard Recalls list to see if any of your children’s toys have been recalled.

Vote with your dollars. Buy toys from manufacturers or artisans you feel you can trust.

Take Action! by reading about the Safe Chemicals Act and send emails to your representatives and senators, email Congress, and don’t forget to tell your friends about the act and ask them to take action as well!

When I first saw a link to Food Politics’ blog about chocolate toddler formula I thought it was a joke. Yes, I’d heard that formula companies make formula for toddlers as well as infants, but chocolate-flavored?? Seriously?! Yes, seriously. Mead-Johnson’s new Enfagrow Premium Chocolate Toddler Formula with “natural and artificial flavors” is on the market for toddlers age 12 to 36 months. Apparently it’s not enough that we load our elementary school-aged kids full of sugar in the form of chocolate milk. What we really need to do is get them hooked on sugar while they’re young – really young – like 12 months old. I wonder what Jamie Oliver would have to say about this?

A delicious new flavor for toddlers 12 months and older – with prebiotics for digestive health!

As your child grows from an infant to a toddler, he’s probably becoming pickier about what he eats. Now more than ever, ensuring that he gets complete nutrition can be a challenge.

That’s why we created new Enfagrow PREMIUM Chocolate with Triple Health Guard™. With more nutrition than milk, Omega-3 DHA, prebiotics, and a great tasting chocolate flavor he’ll love, you can help be sure he’s getting the nutrition he still needs even after he outgrows infant formula.

The chocolate formula sells for $19.99 (for 18 servings) at Safeway in Colorado, but is currently on sale for $16.99. (What a steal!) Yes, I went into the store to check it out for myself (and snap some pictures of the nutrition information). I was tempted to buy a can for the sake of research, but I just couldn’t justify giving Enfamil my money, not even in the name of investigative journalism. For the record, they also make a vanilla flavored formula in case your toddler isn’t into chocolate.

Here’s the list of ingredients for everything present at a level of 2% or more:

Whole milk

Nonfat milk

Sugar

Cocoa

Galactooligosaccharides (prebiotic fiber)

High oleic sunflower oil

Maltodextrin

Nestle also states that, “Mead-Johnson representatives explained that Enfagrow is not meant as an infant formula. It is meant as a dietary supplement for toddlers aged 12 to 36 months.” Yet, as she points out, it’s called “FORMULA” and it has a Nutrition Facts label, not a Supplement Facts label. Hmmm.

Green Mom in the Burbs had this to say: “Gross. I mean, this is just…gross. No, not the KFC Double Down, though that’s pretty disgusting too… I’m talking about this: Chocolate formula for toddlers. Gross. And I thought trying to get chocolate and strawberry flavored milk out of school cafeterias was important. This is just…wow. I’m not sure even Jamie Oliver can save us.”

Cate Nelson from Eco Childs Play calls Enfagrow Chocolate Toddler Formula the “Gag Me Product of the Week” and said, “There are serious problems with this product. First off, why do toddlers, even those who are no longer breastfed, need an infant formula? Is “baby” not getting proper nutrition? And if so, how in the world is a chocolate-flavored formula going to solve this problem?”

Kiera Butler who writes at Mother Jones explains a bit about toddler formula. “So what is toddler formula, anyway? Nutritionally, the unflavored version is pretty similar to whole milk, except with more calcium and phosphorous. There seems to be a consensus that after age one, kids don’t really need formula at all, as long as they have a healthy solid-foods diet and are getting plenty of calcium.”

Danielle, who blogs at Momotics said she was shocked by some of the comments she read on CafeMom about the chocolate toddler formula. One comment read, “What’s the big deal? Kids extended breastfeed.” Danielle responded, “AHHH! There is NO comparison between a chocolate formula for toddlers and a mothers breast milk. They aren’t even on the same page, or in the same book!”

She also wants to know “why are we going to encourage our children into unhealthy eating habits by providing them with a tasty chocolatey treat? In a country with obesity rates in our children growing, it seems like simple and unknowing choices like this as children could lead our kids into serious risky eating habits as adults.”

Danielle adds, “I think the biggest realization this all brought me to today is that Jamie Oliver is right, there is such a huge issue with food, eating, nutrition, and our parents today that we need to seriously take a look at in our country. There is a problem, and the comments that the parents on CafeMom brought to the table did nothing but prove that parents are grossly un- and undereducated on what we should and should not be giving our children.”

Annie from PhD in Parenting points out that because of breastfeeding, her babies got all sorts of great flavors through her breastmilk without having to actually eat artificial flavoring.

JennyLou is concerned about the potential health problems as well. “Our obesity rates continue to climb. More kids are now obese than ever before. Kids don’t know what vegetables are. Kids won’t eat vegetables. Kids are drinking juice, soda, etc. out of baby bottles and then sippy cups. And now, enter chocolate formula. What a recipe for disaster.”

Christina who blogs at A Mommy Story wonders about the possible caffeine levels in the cocoa used in the formula.

All in all, I have to say this product scares the heck out of me. I understand that some children need extra calories and may even live on a entirely liquid diet and there could potentially be a need for this (though I’m guessing there are healthier alternatives), but having a product like this available to the masses seems like a bad, bad idea. Our kids already have the deck stacked against them when it comes to nutrition in this country, why make it any worse?

Nestle ended her post saying, “Next: let’s genetically modify moms to produce chocolate breast milk!” And Abbie, who blogs at Farmer’s Daughter responded, “I’m snacking on some chocolate right now and nursing my son. Funny coincidence. That’s as close as he’s going to get to chocolate milk for a long time.” Rightfully so.

If we’ve heard “breast is best” once, we’ve heard it a thousand times. Health experts agree the benefits of breastfeeding for both the baby and the mother are numerous. A study published earlier this week by the journal Pediatrics points out just how valuable breastfeeding can be. “If 90 percent of new moms in the United States breastfed their babies exclusively for the first six months, researchers estimate that as many as 900 more infants would survive each year, and the country would save about $13 billion in health care costs annually.”

It seems that while everyone gives lip service to the importance of breastfeeding, there isn’t a lot of support for women once they make the decision to breastfeed. Women have been asked to cover up or leave restaurants, water parks, airplanes, and stores when they try to give their baby what’s “best.” Maternity leave in the United States is, at best, 12 weeks. Women who work outside the home have often been forced to pump their breast milk in bathroom stalls, hide under a desk, or sit in their car just to get a little bit of privacy because rooms for nursing/pumping mothers just don’t exist. So yes, breast might be best for baby, but until there are more regulations in place that allow moms to breastfeed without so many roadblocks, how can breast be “best” for moms?

Section 4207 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (also known as Health Care Reform), states that employers shall provide breastfeeding employees with “reasonable break time” and a private, non-bathroom place to express breast milk during the workday, up until the child’s first birthday.

Employers are not required to pay for time spent expressing milk, and employers of less than 50 employees shall not be required to provide the breaks if doing so would cause “undue hardship” to their business.

Tanya from The Motherwear Breastfeeding Blog thinks this is a step in the right direction. “I’m not thrilled that it extends the right for only up to 1 year (I pumped longer for my son), but what a huge difference this would make for mothers in the many states, mine included, that do not extend this right under state law!”

Doula-ing is excited about the new law and calls it “a giant leap forward for mother’s who want to continue to breastfeed their babies once they return to work.”

Kim Hoppes, who doesn’t appear to be a fan of Health Care Reform is, however, pleased with this change. “Well, something good came out of the health care reform nightmare. Places now have to give breaks to nursing moms so they can pump.”

Lylah from Boston.com Moms seems to think the new law is not enough and asks, “How can we expect 90 percent of new moms to breastfeed without support in the workplace?”

One thing seems pretty clear: If it’s in the country’s best interests to have new moms nurse their infants exclusively for at least six months — and the billions of dollars in health care savings indicates that it may be — then new moms should get at least six months of paid leave in which they can do so. The United States and Australia are the only two industrialized countries in the world that do not offer paid maternity leave. And moms in the Outback have a sweeter deal than we do: In Australia, your job is protected for a year, but in the United States new working moms only get that guarantee for 12 weeks.

What do you think about the Reasonable Break Time for Nursing Mothers law? Is it too much? Not enough? Just right? None of the government’s business?